All the "how to" advice I have seen on the internet suggests cutting a 3" hole for the tower dead center in the top. I have seen one posting on NB Forum from Jeff who hit a refrigerant line in the top with one of the tower mounting screws. (Bummer!)

Seems like it would be safer to move the tower off dead center towards the front by about an inch or so to get further away from the refigerant line which crosses the top about 7" from the back side.

Anyone have any opinions or advice on locating the tower hole in the top of the 4912M?

I took temp readings on the top with a handheld laser thermometer - which seem to confrim the location of the refrigerant line in the top as others have suggested - about 7" from the back side. I get a hot spot right in the middle --- less temp towards the sides, more rapid temp drop off towards front or back -- I interpret this as line may be spot welded to top in the middle and then burried in the insulation as it goes to the sides. Does that sound right? Anyone know anything more about where the lines are in the top. Is only the one line - right??

Most of the how-to guides I have seen detail the process of finding the exact location of the refrigerant line using something along the lines of smearing the top with a cornstarch/water mixture and letting the fridge run with the door open so the line heats up, causing it to dry the paste faster and thus be easy to spot.

Most of the people who have mounted the tower have used a board that fits inside some of the webbing of the plastic removable top. Bolt thru the wood and plastic; when installing into the plastic, use some silicone caulking as a glue to help hold the board into the plastic for extra rigidity. I used stainless screw that only went thru the tower, the plastic and then into the wood and stainless t-nuts. Continuing the screws thru the fridge are not necessary...

I believe I cut out some of the webbing with a razor knife and achieved a board size of about 9", what ever the square size is that you have when you remove some of the ribs....

I used the exact center of the plastic top as a hole location, pilot drilled that center, and then set the plastic into position and pilot drilled thru the fridge-it works.

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Originally Posted by orfy

Never mock another man's brewery.

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Originally Posted by IrregularPulse

This is HBT of course. Normal Thread that goes every direction but the one intended. This forum should be scientific proof the beer causes ADD

I'm doing the brother buford conversion. I've removed the shelf from the door, but what im running into now is that I can't seem to find any place to buy a sheet of dry-erase board..at least not for cheap anyway. I've seen some places sell framed dry-erase boards for cheap so I'm thinking that maybe I could buy one of those and just cut the frame out and cut it to fit. My experience has been it's more expensive to get a plain unframed board than to get a finished and framed dry-erase board so I was wondering if anyone had any thoughts on where to go or if there were any good alternatives. I really do like the idea of the dry-erase board for writing notes about the batches and etc.

Also, maybe this is a dumb question, but what is a good suggestion for where to get the bottle the temperature probe is inserted into and how do you seal it up so the ice pack goo doesn't leak out. Ive heard of one person using a liquid yeast bottle, but I don't have one of those. I'm assuming you seal it up with silicone sealant?

For now, I'm not doing a full kegerator conversion, I'm just going to use it for fermenting/lagering for my carboys for now. Then later, as my funds permit, purchase all the rest of the equipment and the kegs and finish the conversion.

VoodooV, I've been pretty much in the same situation as you, I haven't found a good/cheap replacement for the front door moulding. So far I've only been using the fridge to ferment, though, and both my bucket and 6g better bottle fit without doing the door mod (just keep them to the left side of the fridge).

For the temperature probe, I've had good success just taping the probe to the side of the fermenter using painters tape (which is easy to pull on/off). This is arguably superior to putting it in gelpac goo anyway, for a fermenter.

Not a very elegant solution, but on mine, I removed the door panel and re-attached the seal using duct tape directly to the rigid foam on the door. It does hold, does seal, but after reading this will go in search of a whiteboard or maybe a thin rigid foam panel - like used by advertisers and artists - that would use the many tiny screws to secure it and of course be more visually appealing than my method.

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